What is healthy sexuality? Learning from entertainment

Some sexual health experts are concerned that entertainment media promote undesirable forms of sexual practice among young people – including promiscuity and premarital sex. Such concerns are problematic. It is wrong to insist that there is only a single ‘normal’ kind of sexual practice in which all people should engage. Such an approach is heteronormative, relying on a model of healthy sexuality that is vanilla, monogamous and loving. Models of sexuality that do not fit this model – including casual sex, kinky sex, anal sex, BDSM and group sex – are condemned as unhealthy.The Promoting Healthy Sexual Development research group at QUT developed a framework of sixteen domains of healthy sexual development. These are: freedom from unwanted activity; an understanding of consent; education about biological aspects of sexual aspects; understanding of safety; relationship skills; agency; lifelong learning; resilience; open communication; sexual development should not be ‘aggressive, coercive or joyless’; self-acceptance; acceptance that sex can be pleasurable; understanding of parental and societal values; awareness of public/private boundaries; and competence in mediated sexuality.

There is no requirement for healthy sexual development that young people grow up heterosexual, vanilla or committed to monogamy. We can think about entertainment media in a different way. Entertainment provides a good guide to what the majority of citizens think is acceptable sexually. It should not be surprising, for example, that a nationally representative survey of Australians found that 85% of citizens agree with the statement ‘Sex before marriage is acceptable’. Around 15% of Australians have engaged in anal play. Perhaps from entertainment we can learn that the majority of Australians think that fun is an important part of sex. How can we integrate that perspective into our own work?

Prof. Alan McKee

Professor Alan McKee leads the Promoting Healthy Sexuality Research Group at Queensland University of Technology, and heads Research Program 5: ‘Education – Developing improved sexual health education strategies’ in the National and International Research Alliances Program grant ‘Improved surveillance, treatment and control of chlamydial infections’. He has published extensively on healthy sexual development with particular attention to the role of sexualized media. His most recent article on this topic is ‘The importance of entertainment to sexuality education’, which is in press with Sex Education.